Our bravest contributors have shared with us some of their more earnest efforts from the misty past. Scary Bush should not be reviewed while in the process of drinking liquids, and the reader assumes all risk.

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Sheila Wellehan

Blue

Rebecca Connors

Casting meoff his shoulder
I fell, shaking to aloneIf a far if should come along—I am waiting with possibility

Here is a timelike yesterday’s present—letters cradled inside the drawer, next
to old papers, burnt photographs,
these arms hold my past,I place the words so far away
but in my ears, they ringbrilliantdeeper than a whispered yes

Here is the constanton the street,
movements of a clear perspective—streets are colored differently now,but they breathe
the same lazy syllables in fractured tongues, the tiredhello, ignoring the

new in my face.How well can I learn my landscape?
The potential is in the blueopen space,if I put my feet through itI can arrive—

Can you embrace the if? Because I feelstrength inyour absence
—defined bythe taste of your tongue, thetemperatureof your eyes—

words are never abused, I can enjoyyour blue silence—

breathing immensity

Untitled

Kristin LaTour

Little Devils

Alisha Mughal

We work so hard to seem simple.

My mother first told me about the devils when I was twelve years old. She didn’t mean to tell me, particularly. I could’ve been anyone, but I was there. I don’t think she could take it anymore. Take it alone. It came out ostensibly as an accidental slip, but really she’d deftly worked it into a conversation seemingly casual, a conversation contrived by her to seem casual. Everything was, is now revealing itself to be, so overwrought with her. Everything calculated and deliberate, nothing unnecessary.

Name Of

Jessica Morey-Collins

Slave to the Full Moon

Alyssa Mazzoli

Ever since the fateful night,
When I received the painful bite,
Never the same my life has been,
Me committing sin after sin,
Trapped in a mental cage,
Senses overrun with rage,
A slave to the full moon.

When it rises as do I,
Oblivious to my victims cry,
I watch them draw one last breath,
Right before their untimely death,
A part of me always wants to help,
The other doesn’t care what they felt,
A slave to the full moon.

A horrible sight I must be,
My face alive with evil glee,
Bloodshot eyes sunk in my head,
That’s what they see on their deathbed,
Wicked fangs protruding down,
Upon their now lifeless crown,
A slave to the full moon.

By day I go as merry peasant,
Though full moon nights are never pleasant,
I say I enjoy my life by day,
But my thoughts are seldom so gay,
For I am haunted by the dread,
That tomorrow morning more shall be dead,
A slave to the full moon.

Now I would welcome a silver bullet to the head,
But it would just mean that I was now dead,
It wouldn’t bring those I killed back,
Nor grant them the life they now lack,
For I’m tired of roaming,
Groaning and moaning,
As a slave to the full moon.

The Frog

Suzanne Langlois

Inanna/Dumuzi: Love Song

Brenda Mann Hammack

Tongue-playing, they snake,
intertwine on a bed of rushes.
She unbinds her hair, amber-
mouthed and kohl-eyed, reaches
for the shepherd's staff,
his reed growing high,
as the Tigris and Euphrates
flow over. He pours
into her holy churn. Her honey-
man, her honey-moon, risen
from compost. Sweet as
cedar and juniper resin
burning. Inanna
and Dumuzi, her shepherd
king, unlike Jesus.
She holds him in her yoke until he lows.